Category: Hypocrisy

More of This

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In Texas, Democrats in the Statehouse walked out, denying quorum for a vote, to stop the Republican voter suppression bill.

The Texas Governor is threatening to veto the budget for the legislature in response, because black and brown people voting is to their twisted minds is an affront to God, or at least THEIR god, because it’s clear that they are seriously into Mammon:

Democrats in the Texas Legislature staged a dramatic, late-night walkout on Sunday night to force the failure of a sweeping Republican overhaul of state election laws. The move, which deprived the session of the minimum number of lawmakers required for a vote before a midnight deadline, was a stunning setback for state Republicans who had made a new voting law one of their top priorities.

The effort is not entirely dead, however. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, indicated that he would call a special session of the Legislature, which could start as early as June 1, or Tuesday, to restart the process. The governor has said that he strongly supported an election bill, and in a statement he called the failure to reach one on Sunday “deeply disappointing.” He was widely expected to sign whatever measure Republicans passed.

“Election Integrity & Bail Reform were emergency items for this legislative session,” Mr. Abbott said on Twitter on Sunday night. “They will be added to the special session agenda.” He did not specify when the session would start.

While Republicans would still be favored to pass a bill in a special session, the unexpected turn of events on Sunday presents a new hurdle in their push to enact a far-reaching election law that would install some of the most rigid voting restrictions in the country, and cement the state as one of the hardest in which to cast a ballot.

………

After a lengthy debate in the State House of Representatives in which Democrats raised numerous objections, staged lengthy question-and-answer sessions and leveraged procedural maneuvers, Democrats departed en masse, leaving the chamber roughly 14 members short of the required 100-member quorum to continue business. Without the requisite number of legislators, Dade Phelan, the speaker of the State House, adjourned the session around 11 p.m. local time, effectively killing the bill for this legislative session.

Maybe if Democrats in the US Senate get their heads out of their asses, this will mean something in the end. 

I’m not holding my breath.

Candace Owens is the Worst Minstrel Show Ever

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It’s not fair to mock Candace Owens for not knowing Lee Harvey Oswald was a marine.

In her defense, she is a moron. pic.twitter.com/fFVMG8xli0

— JDP (@petee224) June 1, 2021

Candace Owens who has gone from not particularly talented actress to right-wing joke, just doubled down on the joke part.

You see, an internet prankster sent a (real) picture of a (real) US Marine to various right-wing figures, asking them to wish a happy memorial day on behalf of his (fake) grandfather.

It was a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald, a man who every US Marine would condemn, even if he had not shot JFK, because he also defected to the USSR.

Candace Owens was in high dudgeon about this, claiming that it was disrespectful to Photoshop his picture into a photo of a US Serviceman.

Of course, anyone who knows who Oswald was should know that he was (a pretty horrible, twice court martialed) US Marine.

You can object to the prank, I find it hilarious, but claiming that it is a Photoshop is beyond stupid.

I guess that this is what comes from a decade or so of channeling Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (Aka Stepin Fetchit).

It rots the mind.

Karen²

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Amy Cooper, who was caught on tape attempting to use the police to murder a bird watcher who noted that her dog needed to be leashed in that area of Central Park, has now sued her former employer, who fired her for the episode.

She is now claiming that she was fired because she was white.

My guess is that she has discovered that she is justifiably toxic and cannot get a new position anything near to what she used to do.

Consequences are a good thing, and they should apply to white people as well:

Amy Cooper, a white woman who last year became an international symbol of the routine racism that Black people face in their daily lives, is suing her former employer for firing her, arguing that she is a victim of racial discrimination.

Ms. Cooper makes the claim in a lawsuit filed this week against the investment firm Franklin Templeton, which terminated her employment a year ago after she was captured on a widely shared video in a tense encounter with a Black bird-watcher.

The lawsuit is the latest fallout from the May 2020 episode in Central Park, which touched off intense discussions about the history of white people making false, and sometimes life-threatening, accusations against Black people to the police.

………

She says in the suit, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan, that she “did not shout at Christian Cooper or call the police from Central Park on May 25, 2020, because she was a racist — she did these things because she was alone in the park and frightened to death.” She goes on to say that Mr. Cooper had selected her as a “target” and describes him as “overzealous.”

And the suit argues that Franklin Templeton did not thoroughly investigate the situation because of Ms. Cooper’s own race and gender, effectively reaching its decision to terminate her because she is a white woman.

They terminated you because are a self-important bigot, and people won’t hire you for the same reason.

The fact that you are a horrible human being who got caught on tape is karma, not oppression.

How Utterly Appropriate

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Why am I not surprise that former DNC chair and former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez has just joined the staff of a union busting law firm.

This is the guy that Barack Obama heavily lobbied to be head of the DNC in order to prevent Keith Ellison from assuming the role.

So the former Labor Secretary is going to work to bust unions.

So why am I not at all surprised?

Considering the Obama administration’s indifference, if not outright hostility, to organized labor, this seems to be a natural progression:

Former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez announced on Thursday that he’s joining the law firm Venable LLP, whose website boasts that its lawyers “regularly counsel and train clients on union avoidance.”

Perez, who was the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair until January, joins a growing number of Obama officials who cashed in their government experience with jobs at union-busting companies. That list includes press secretaries Jay Carney, who became the top flack at Amazon, and Robert Gibbs, who spent several years as a top flack for McDonald’s. Obama senior advisor David Plouffe served as policy chief at Uber, while former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett has a board seat at Lyft.

Yeah, Obama also promised no revolving door in his administration, and we know how that worked out.

………

Perez served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under President Barack Obama, before serving as Obama’s Labor Secretary from 2013 to 2017.

Later, he served as DNC chair, after Obama and now-President Joe Biden reportedly worked the phones to help propel him to victory over progressive favorite Keith Ellison, who is now Minnesota’s attorney general.

The bright side is that Ellison worked assiduously to convict Derek Chauvin, while a more conventional prosecutor might have let the local DA throw the case.

It really is remarkable just how quickly former Obama Administration officials peddled their government connections for profit.  (How audacious)

Our Government Needs to Stop Hiring Psychopaths

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The Biden Administration has announced that it will be appointing Richard Nephew as assistant envoy to Iran.

He’s kind of a classic foreign policy sadist, particularly as he is a former Obama Administration sanctions expert, but he’s written a book where he brags about hurting ordinary citizens through the sanctions that he devised.

Colloquially, it’s called saying the quiet part out loud. Legally, it’s called a crime against humanity:

The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its deputy Iran envoy. As the former principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry, and driving up unemployment rates.

Nephew has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting US sanctions.

Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

Doubling down on bad policy and ignoring agreements that have been signed because ……… American Exceptionalism.  Great policy there.

You see, he wrote a book:

………

Entitled “The Art of Sanctions: A View From The Field,” the book’s cover image features two Caucasian hands drawing a rope for a noose, presumably to strangle some insufficiently pliant Global South government. Its contents read like a list of criminal confessions, detailing in chillingly clinical terms how the sanctions Nephew conceived from inside an air-conditioned office in Washington immiserated average Iranians.

With his candor, Nephew has shattered the official US rhetoric about “targeted sanctions” that exclusively punish “bad actors” and their business cronies while leaving civilian populations unharmed.

………

Nephew also patted himself on the back for tripling the price of chicken “during important Iranian holiday periods,” thereby “contribut[ing] to more popular frustration in one bank shot than years of financial restrictions.”

Next, he boasted of more sanctions targeting civilians to prevent Iranians from obtaining the assistance they needed to repair their cars. “Iran’s manufacturing jobs and export revenue were the targets of this sanction,” Nephew wrote.

………

In response to online criticism, Nephew has claimed that “the main target” of the sanctions regime he designed was “the oligarchs.” But his book on “The Art of Sanctions” tells another story.

Nephew fondly recalls how he structured sanctions to sabotage Iranian economic reforms that would have improved the purchasing power of average people. The Obama administration destroyed the economic prospects of Iran’s working-class majority while ensuring that “only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connectedness,” he wrote. As “stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation,” Nephew pronounced another success.

Rather unsurprisingly, the government of Venezuela has submitted Nephew’s books and articles as evidence of war crimes to the ICC

Yesterday, we officially submitted before the International Criminal Court the book “The Art of Sanctions” and the article “Evaluating the Trump Administration’s Approach to Sanctions: Venezuela”, both by @RichardMNephew, advisor to Obama and Biden for the imposition of sanctions pic.twitter.com/lW9d3V4bRW

— Jorge Arreaza M (@jaarreaza) May 18, 2021

Richard Nephew’s books and articles are also evidence that he is too stupid, and too criminal, to hold a security clearance, much less hold a senior position in the any Presidential administration.

⅔ of Republicans Vote to Kill Capitol Insurrection Investigation

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This does not surprise me.

Seeing as how many members of the Republican caucus, particularly House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are hip deep in the conspiracies behind the January 6 insurrection, it comes as no surprise that House Republican leaders aggressively whipped the vote against a commission to investigate the matter.

This is why the idea of a bipartisan commission is a bad thing; unlike 911, Republican Representatives and Senators are suspects, and not just observers: 

The House of Representatives has voted in favor of a bill that would create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol in January.

The vote fell largely along party lines, with 35 Republicans joining Democrats in passing the measure. However, 175 Republicans voted against the bill, as Republican leaders endeavored to put the deadly 6 January attack behind them, and reframe the riot as a protest.

………

“It sounds like they are afraid of the truth, and that’s most unfortunate, but hopefully they’ll get used to the idea that the American people want us to find the truth,” Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said as she sharply criticized Republicans for opposing the bill.

Three Republicans spoke in favor of the legislation: John Katko, Fred Upton and Peter Meijer. All were among the 10 who had voted days after the attack to impeach Trump for encouraging his supporters to attack the Capitol.

The Republican Party is an enemy of the Republic.

Yeah, Subsidies, That Will Work

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The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has come to the conclusion that the Gypsy cab companies like Uber and Lyft are dysproportionally responsivle for greenhouse gas emissions in the state, and so they are looking to pass a rule mandating electric vehicle adoptions by those companies.

Uber and Lyft want public subsidies to follow the law.

The response of California should be to tell them to go Cheney themselves:

California clean-air regulators want nearly all trips on Uber and Lyft ride-hailing platforms to be in electric vehicles, mandating costly measures that the companies call unrealistic without more public subsidies for EVs.

………

And yet the firms are pushing back on the CARB effort to force the transition, arguing taxpayers should shoulder much of the burden.

………

Uber and Lyft say they can’t afford the EV transition either. Uber said in a December letter to CARB that, without “sufficient” subsidies, the rule would unduly burden the companies, along with their drivers and consumers.

Uber and Lyft have already proved that they are an enemy of good government (Proposition 22), let them pay their own way.

That’s What I Thought You’d Say, You Dumb F%$#ing Horse Trainer

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When an athlete is caught doping, generally I blame the athlete first and foremost.

I make an exception in the case of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, because sane people to do not assign the same level of agency that they would to a human athlete.

On the other hand, I do ascribe a level of agency to Bob Baffert, Medina Spirit’s trainer, and when he claims that Churchill Downs’ decision to revoke his horses win, and to suspend him is, “Cancel Culture.” 

So says a guy who for Medina Spirit is the, “fifth horse in 13 months to test positive,” and before that his, “Horses have failed 29 drug tests.”

And he’s blaming, “Cancel culture,” for his juicing horses.

He’s a complete tool, but I am grateful to have the opportunity to adopt one of John Mulaney’s best known lines.

My Heart Bleeds Borscht

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Elizabeth Holmes’ lawyers are desperately trying to hide her extravagant lifestyle from the jury, because they know how poorly this will fare with a jury.

Needless to say, the prosecution wants to include this information, both because it would make the jury hostile to her, and because it goes to motive.

I’m rooting for the prosecution:

Attorneys for Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes sparred with federal prosecutors Thursday over whether details of the wealth, fame and perks she attained as chief executive would be relevant to jurors at her coming criminal fraud trial.

“What she wore, where she stayed, how she flew, what she ate—has nothing to do with this trial,” Kevin Downey, an attorney for Ms. Holmes, said in federal court in San Jose, Calif.

Ms. Holmes is facing a trial in late August on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for alleged misrepresentations she made about Theranos’s blood-testing technology.

………

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said Thursday he had concerns about whether prosecutors could talk about the popularity Ms. Holmes obtained as CEO along with perks such as the use of a private jet and stays in fancy hotels. Ms. Holmes was once worth $4.5 billion on paper. Mr. Downey said in court she received a salary of a “couple hundred thousand dollars a year,” which he said was probably less than many of her peers.

………

“The point here is the so-called success of Theranos was entirely the product of a fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bostic said in court, arguing that details about her lifestyle are relevant because they can help show Ms. Holmes’ motive.

………

Attorneys for Ms. Holmes argued this week that jurors could unfairly view the violations found by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Food & Drug Administration as proof that Ms. Holmes is guilty.

“The jury could convict based on violation of a regulation, that’s the danger,” Jean Ralph Fleurmont, a Williams & Connolly attorney representing Ms. Holmes, told the judge.

Ummm ……… That Theranos, and hence Holmes, was knowingly violating regulations goes to the heart of the fraud.

The fact that she repeatedly violated goes to intent, particularly when she threatened people who notified of her of problems.

Prosecutors said Ms. Holmes regularly cited Theranos’s compliance with federal standards to the press and in board meetings, making it relevant. The fact that they weren’t complying with industry standards is “a brick in the wall” that helps show the company’s tests “were not accurate or reliable,” assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach said.

I think that Elizabeth Holmes should be treated fairly and equally, by which I mean that she should be treated like a random minority accused of low level bunco.

So Much for the Unfettered Free Market

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 It turns out that former FCC Chair Ajit Pai’s promises of a brave new world of competition and performance increases and price drops when ISPs were released from burdensome regulation.

Instead, prices continued to rise unabated, and there was no meaningful improvement in performance.

Not a surprise.  The broadband industry is about extracting monopoly rents, and deregulation increases their ability to extract the aforementioned rents:

The average US home-Internet bill increased 19 percent during the first three years of the Trump administration, disproving former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s claim that deregulation lowered prices, according to a new report by advocacy group Free Press. For tens of millions of families that aren’t wealthy, “these increases are felt deeply, forcing difficult decisions about which services to forgo so they can maintain critical Internet access services,” Free Press wrote.

The 19 percent Trump-era increase is adjusted for inflation to match the value of 2020 dollars, with the monthly cost rising from $39.35 in 2016 to $47.01 in 2019. Without the inflation adjustment, the average household Internet price rose from $36.48 in 2016 to $46.38 in 2019, an increase of 27 percent.

The nominal increase in each of the three years was between 7.27 percent and 9.94 percent, while inflation each year ranged from 1.81 percent to 2.44 percent.

“That means the nominal increase in broadband bills was more than four times the rate of inflation during those three years,” Free Press said. The report is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditures Survey data, which does not yet include 2020.

………

“[B]roadband prices consistently increase faster than the rate of inflation while the providers’ own costs do not. This makes this increasingly critical infrastructure service both more expensive in real terms to users and more profitable for the ISPs,” the report said.

Capital investment by Internet providers has dropped, “with substantial declines at large companies like AT&T (where 2020 investment was 52 percent below the 2016 total for the company on an inflation-adjusted basis) and Comcast (where 2020 cable segment investment was 22 percent below 2016’s level on an inflation-adjusted basis),” the report said.

In a press release, Free Press said that ISPs “grew their profits to record levels before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing their prices during an unprecedented economic downturn,” and that “low-priced entry-level options for high-speed Internet service are disappearing, raising the adoption barrier for low-income families.”

The entire narrative that has driven the overpriced and under-performing connectivity situation is a lie.

He Won’t, Though

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It appears that there has been an outbreak of extreme naivete at The Nation, where they expect Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to to confront The Ukraine over their embrace of Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, and revisionist history.

This will never happen.

Blinken, and Biden, are a part of a foreign policy establishment who never ended the Cold War, and simply changed the name from “USSR” to “Russia” on their to-do lists.

Fighting Nazis is simply too inconvenient for these folks:

From the moment he was nominated for secretary of state, the media has made much over the Holocaust’s impact on Antony Blinken. Blinken’s stepfather was a famous survivor; his upbringing made the Holocaust an indelible part of Blinken’s identity. Indeed, last month Blinken lambasted America’s callousness during the genocide, going so far as denouncing a World War II–era State Department official for refusing to aid Jews fleeing Europe.

The speech was hailed as a righteous reckoning—and it was. But condemning long-dead officials is one thing. Today, Blinken will have a chance to stand up for Holocaust victims in a far less comfortable environment. He will visit Kyiv, a city where, merely a week ago, hundreds marched in honor of a Nazi SS division. The march was denounced by Germany and Israel, but not the United States.

Blinken’s visit becomes a crucial test, considering that Ukraine is a key US ally: Addressing Kyiv’s blatant glorification of Nazi collaborators would be an opportunity to rise above the failures of his predecessors, placing the Holocaust above geopolitics.

Last Wednesday’s march was in honor of SS Galichina, a Ukrainian volunteer division in the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Party’s military arm responsible for the Holocaust. In 1944, SS Galichina was personally inspected by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s second in command and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. The division’s record of war crimes includes the Huta Pieniacka massacre, when an SS Galichina subunit exterminated around a thousand Polish villagers, chiefly by burning them alive.

………

The US embassy in Kyiv did not respond to a request for comment, while a State Department spokesperson replied, on background, “We welcome President Zelenskiy’s strong statement condemning the march,” and that the department “continues to monitor and systematically refute a longstanding Russian disinformation campaign that conflates support for Ukrainian sovereignty with support for neo-Nazi and fascist ideals.”

The comment did not explain what, if any, connection Kyiv’s SS march has with Russia or disinformation.

But the truly surprising thing is that Kyiv’s SS march made headlines at all. The reality is that glorification of Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators isn’t a glitch but a feature of today’s Ukraine.

One aided and abetted by the US state security apparatus, as evidenced by the strong support given by the US government during the Maidan protests.  (Victoria Nuland literally brought them cookies)

Shortly after the Maidan uprising of 2013 to ’14 brought in a new government, Ukraine began whitewashing Nazi collaborators on a statewide level. In 2015, Kyiv passed legislation declaring two WWII-era paramilitaries—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—heroes and freedom fighters and threatening legal action against anyone denying their status. The OUN was allied with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust; the UPA murdered thousands of Jews and 70,000–100,000 Poles on their own accord.

………

The typical reaction to this in the West is that Ukraine can’t be celebrating Nazi collaborators because it elected Zelenskiy, a Jewish president. Zelenskiy, however, has alternated between appeasing and ignoring the whitewashing: In 2018, he stated, “To some Ukrainians, [Nazi collaborator] Bandera is a hero, and that’s cool!”

Zelinskiy is a Kapo, and we should not be supporting what is going on in the Ukraine.  (Same goes to a lesser degree in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland)

If American foreign policy in the 21st century stands for anything beyond corporate profits, we need to be firmly anti-Nazi.

Glorification of Nazis leads to the creation of nativist political movements that eventually corrupt the politics, and lead to the implementation of Fascist policies.

Sadism as Official Policy

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Context on the Dental Floss

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte is ending his state’s participation in the federal program increasing unemployment payments, because he thinks that it makes people too lazy.

Instead, he’s offering a one time limited offer of an “Employment Bonus.”

This is unbelievably and deeply stupid policy, as well as being stupid politically, particularly in a state so lily white (88.54%) that there are virtually no Black people (0.50%) to blame everything on.

I think that his brain has been poisoned by agricultural chemicals used on those famous Montana dental floss farms:

The coronavirus pandemic – heard of it? It’s famously still going on! Though national case numbers are finally starting to drop and recent regional outbreaks in the midwest have begun to subside, there were still about 50,000 new Covid-19 infections recorded in the US on Tuesday and just over 700 new virus-related deaths.

But Greg Gianforte, Montana’s governor, has other priorities: he’s been talking about a “labor shortage” in a cynical attempt to cut public assistance. The Republican governor released a statement on Tuesday announcing his state will stop participating in the federal program that has given unemployed workers additional unemployment payments since the start of the pandemic – in an apparent attempt to get Montanans back to work, and he plans to give those who choose to do so something he calls a “return-to-work bonus”.

………

Although Montana’s unemployment rate fell to 3.8% in April, which is about at pre-pandemic levels, the state’s labor commissioner, Laurie Esau, says its labor force is approximately 10,000 workers smaller than it was pre-lockdown, a drop that Gianforte assumes is to do with lazy people who, given their new found pandemic benefits, don’t want to work any more. And according to Montana department of labor estimates, nearly 25,000 people are currently filing unemployment claims, a good chunk of whom the governor is eager to push into the state’s 14,000 or so job openings.

But this means there aren’t enough job openings for the number of people unemployed; even if the governor’s plan succeeds in filling those vacant positions as intended, there will still be over 10,000 people without jobs to apply for, forced to subsist on less. It is also wildly reductive to assume that because there are fewer people working, it must be the result of a lack of will. People had jobs, and those jobs were taken away, either through mass layoffs or government shutdowns of businesses. That kind of disruption takes time to recover from. People could now be working out childcare arrangements again; finding out where they fit in a new jobs market; or worried about returning to work until the coast is clear.

The headline of this story should be, “Montana Governor has tragically small penis, inflicts pain on whole state to compensate.”

Also, boycott Montana grown dental floss until this policy is reversed.

Frau Merkel (Horses Whinny) Is at It Again

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The day after the Biden Administration said that it supported suspending IP rights on the Covid Vaccine, Angela Merkel comes out against this.

I think that her motivation is pretty simple:  Covid response is going pear-shaped in Germany, with Covid cases spiking, and by ginning up a controversy, she can avoid scrutiny of her handling of the pandemic.

This is not the first time that she has done this, it’s behind the whole policy of “othering” southern Europeans and spreading misery throughout the EU during and after the financial crisis.

She knows that if she’s seen as doing something, anything, with the argument that she is protecting Germans from the undeserving “other” she, and her CDU Party, can benefit, even if it provides no benefit to Germans, and may kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Merkel is despicable:

The US and Germany are at odds on the issue of waivers for patents on Covid-19 vaccines, as Berlin argued that a waiver would not increase production and would inhibit future private sector research.

The disagreement is the first major rift between the two economic powers since Joe Biden took office, and threatens to deadlock discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sour relations within the G7 group of major industrialised democracies.

Any WTO decision on a waiver would have to be by consensus, so Germany opposition is a major obstacle to intellectual property rights on vaccines being suspended.

The Biden government’s announcement on Wednesday that it would back a waiver on vaccine patents was welcomed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a step towards greater global equity at a time when poor countries have little access to vaccines and south Asia has been hit by a devastating outbreak. India accounted for 46% of the new Covid-19 cases recorded around the world over the past week, and there are signs the wave is spreading to Nepal, Sri Lanka and other neighbouring states.

But Angela Merkel’s government came out against a waiver on Thursday.

“The US suggestion for the lifting of patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines has significant implications for vaccine production as a whole,” a government spokeswoman said.

“The limiting factors in the production of vaccines are the production capacities and the high-quality standards and not patents,” she added, arguing that the companies were already working with partners to boost manufacturing capacity.

This argument about the difficulty of vaccines is patently false, as I noted yesterday. 

You can mass produce mRNA viruses in a space smaller than the file room necessary to store the quality control documents, and Angela Merkel knows this; she got her PhD in Quantum Chemistry.

Unfortunately, there is no one in politics in Germany who is willing to call her out on her lies.

And Yet He Remains a Respected Part of the DC Establishment

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A federal judge just called former Attorney General William Barr a liar.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson just accused him of deliberately misleading her, Congress and the public about his characterization of the results of the Mueller investigation.

Furthermore, she notes that his description of the memos that avoid public disclosure through the FOIA process.

Why this man has a law license is beyond me:

A federal judge in Washington accused the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr of misleading her and Congress about advice he had received from top department officials on whether President Donald J. Trump should have been charged with obstructing the Russia investigation and ordered that a related memo be released.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.

The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be.

………

Her rebuke shed new light on Mr. Barr’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Trump. She also wrote that although the department portrayed the advice memo as a legal document protected by attorney-client privilege, it was done in concert with Mr. Barr’s publicly released summary, “written by the very same people at the very same time.”

………

The ruling came in a lawsuit by a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asking that the Justice Department be ordered to turn over a range of documents related to how top law enforcement officials cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.

At issue is how Mr. Barr handled the end of the Mueller investigation and the release of its findings to the public. In March 2019, the office of the special counsel overseeing the inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, delivered its report to the Justice Department. In a highly unusual decision, Mr. Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Mr. Trump had illegally obstructed justice.

………

But instead, Judge Jackson wrote, Mr. Barr and his aides had already decided not to bring charges against Mr. Trump. She reprimanded the department for portraying the memo as part of deliberations over whether to prosecute the president. She noted that she had been allowed to read the full memo before making her decision, over the objections of the Justice Department, and that it revealed that “excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the attorney general to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”

………

The Justice Department argued that the emails were exempt from disclosure and filed sworn affidavits about their contents by lawyers for the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration. But Judge Jackson insisted on reading the emails for herself and wrote that “the court discovered that there were obvious differences between the affiants’ description of the nature and subject matter of the documents, and the documents themselves.”

More so than Donald Trump, Roger Stone, or Rudolph Giuliani, William Barr needs to be in the dock.

First, he was US Attorney General, and should be subject to a higher standard of behavior than your standard political hack, and second, he is a fixture of the Washington, DC establishment, and someone needs to poke a hole in their own innate sense of impunity for the whole corrupt edifice.

That he can still practice law is an abomination.

Their Tears Will Salt My Soup

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When I see a headline like this:

Richest Americans Face Biden’s Tax Hike With Anger, Denial, Grief

I smile.

It seems that many of these folks, who were born on 3rd base and thought that they had hit a triple, are so personally offended to be made pay their fair share.

They are losing their sh%$ over the lower tax rate for capital gains going away.

They keep saying things like, “Over-taxing success is un-American.”

Oh, you poor delicate snowflake.  Your subsidy is going away, and your feelings are hurt.

F%$# you with Cheney’s dick.

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

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Given the education policies of Obama Administration, and its support for the most rapacious of the chrter school looters, it should be no surprise that  Seth Andrew, former, “Senior advisor and superintendent-in-residence at the U.S. Department of Education, ” and , “enior advisor in the Office of Educational Technology,” was charged with stealing from the charter school that he founded.

It is a perfect metaphor for the increasingly corrupt and increasingly segregated world of  charter schools:

A former senior adviser in the Obama administration was arrested Tuesday on charges that he stole more than $200,000 from a network of charter schools that he founded and used the money to get a lower interest rate on a mortgage for a Manhattan apartment, federal prosecutors said.

The founder, Seth Andrew, 42, is accused of taking money from bank accounts controlled by Democracy Prep Public Schools, which teaches mostly low-income students of color in New York and other states, and using it for the purchase of a $2 million apartment, prosecutors said.

Mr. Andrew is charged with one count each of wire fraud, money laundering and making a false statement to a bank. The first two charges both carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and the third carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, according to a statement on Tuesday from Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the assistant director-in-charge of the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Today Andrew himself is learning one of life’s most basic lessons — what doesn’t belong to you is not yours for the taking,” Mr. Sweeney said in the statement.

Don’t you know the first rule of charter schools, “The only crime is to get caught.”

This guy got caught.

Bill Gates Is Really a Worthless Piece of Sh%$

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I have called Bill Gates a mass murderer for his efforts to prevent open source vaccines from being released, and now that there is a rising call for freeing up vaccines, the Microsoft founder is doubling down on his extremist mass-murdering agenda:

Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution — despite a growing international call to do exactly that — is a bad idea.

Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it “would be helpful” to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: “No.”

Asked to explain why not, Gates — whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth — said: “Well, there’s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it’s novel — it’s only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all.”

………

Nick Dearden, executive director of Global Justice Now, one of the lead partner groups in an international coalition calling for WTO patent waivers at a crucial meeting of the world body next month, characterized Gates’ remarks — and the ideological framework behind them — as “disgusting.”

“Who appointed this billionaire head of global health?” asked Dearden. “Oh yeah, he did.”

Bill Gates has always been an asshole.

He was a bully as a boss, and he has spent the past few decades trying to launder his reputation through charity actions that frequently, as in the case of Covid vaccines do more harm than good.

By the time this pandemic is over, he will probably be responsible for more deaths than Saddam Hussein, and perhaps more than Pol Pot.

Clearly the Democratic Party is Anti-Semitic

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This what forced Virginia Republicans to hold their nominating convention on Shabbat, with no provision for observant Jews to vote at an alternate time.

This is not a surprise.

Silly Jews, votes are for Goys:

The Virginia Republican Party, already under fire for a process for picking a gubernatorial candidate that critics say excludes some voters, just disenfranchised another constituency: Shabbat-observant Jews.

A majority of the State Central Committee voted Thursday for a religious exemption to voting at the convention taking place on May 8, a Saturday, but did not meet the 75% threshold to pass. Elections Daily, an elections news site, reported that 38 officials voted for an exemption, 28 voted against and three abstained.

An official at the state GOP confirmed the vote and told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to submit a question in writing about the vote.

The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Twitter that it was disappointed in the decision.

………

Republicans in recent years have veered between primaries and conventions. Rank-and-file party members have often complained that conventions are a means for the leadership to make sure the candidates it favors get the vote.

This is not a surprise.

Republicans these days are determined to prevent the “Wrong People” from voting, and it comes as no surprise that Jews are the wrong people for them too.

If they had their way, they would repeal the 15th and 19th amendments as well, and limit the franchise to white Christian property owners.

H/T Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

 

I Think that His Consultant Gigs are at an End

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Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh has announced that there will be a review of all the reports on in custody depths by former Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland David Fowler following his clearly dishonest testimony at the Derek Chauvin.

Given that Fowler is currently being sued for covering up the eerily similar death of Angus Black under police restraint, it seems to me that Fowler’s days as a hired gun for bad cops are over.

As an aside, I am not at all surprised that he was born in what was then Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe) and was did his medical school in Cape Town, South Africa, graduating from medical school in 1983,  working in South Africa until moving to the US in 1991.

It does appear that he has a rather long history of excusing law enforcement misconduct against people of color:

The Maryland’s Attorney General’s Office said Friday it believes there should be a review of “in custody” death reports produced by the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during the tenure of Dr. David Fowler, nine days after Fowler testified that an ex-Minneapolis police officer was not responsible for the death of George Floyd in police custody.

The announcement came less than 24 hours after the attorney general’s office received a letter from the former medical examiner of Washington, D.C., Roger A. Mitchell, signed by 431 doctors from around the country, saying Fowler’s testimony and conclusions were so far outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice that all his previous work could come into question.

“Dr. Fowler’s stated opinion that George Floyd’s death during active police restraint should be certified with an ‘undetermined’ manner is outside the standard practice and conventions for investigating and certification of in-custody deaths. This stated opinion raises significant concerns for his previous practice and management,” the letter said.

Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office said Friday afternoon that it agreed for the need to review Fowler’s work, and said it had been in contact with Gov. Larry Hogan’s staff.

“We agree that it is appropriate for independent experts to review reports issued by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) regarding deaths in custody,” Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for Frosh, said in an statement to The Baltimore Sun. “We are already in conversations with the Governor’s Office about the need for such a review, and have offered to coordinate it.”

Fowler testified that Floyd died of a sudden heart rhythm problem due to his heart disease while being restrained by police, contradicting several experts who said Floyd died due to a lack of oxygen. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck.

………

Black’s 2018 death was captured on video, with Greensboro police holding the unarmed teenager down for more than six minutes. Fowler ruled that Black died because of a sudden cardiac event while struggling with police, and not because they pinned him in a prone position.

Testifying in the Floyd case, Fowler said that police, who held Floyd down in a prone position for more than nine minutes, did not cause Floyd’s death. His testimony was rebutted by a string of prosecution medical experts.

………

The office will review all cases from 2003-2020, which falls under Fowler’s tenure. He retired in 2019 after 17 years as chief medical examiner to go into private consulting practice. He was considered one of the foremost medical examiners in the country and served on national boards.

Included in that time period is the death of Tyrone West, who died after struggling with Baltimore Police following a traffic stop in 2013. Witnesses and the officers themselves said there was a violent struggle between the officers and West, but the state medical examiner’s office ruled that he died from natural causes exacerbated by the struggle and the summer heat. That ruling played a significant factor in the officers being cleared by the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office.

That the findings of the study are likely to support the lawsuit against him over the death of Angus Black is just the cherry on top of all of this.

Here is hoping that this guy’s professional reputation is destroyed.  It should have happened years ago.

Karma’s a Bitch, Neh?

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Liberty University has just sued Jerry Falwell Jr. for ten million dollars, claiming that his behavior ran counter to his obligations as an officer of the school.

I only hope that there is a way for both of them to lose:

Liberty University filed a lawsuit this week against its former president Jerry Falwell Jr., alleging that he breached his contract and fiduciary duties to the school as he sought to cover up a personal scandal.

The evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Va., is seeking more than $10 million in damages from the man who led it for 13 years. The suit filed Thursday in Lynchburg Circuit Court marked another twist in the saga of Falwell’s messy departure last year from Liberty.

………

Later that month he agreed to resign after news reports emerged about a young man Falwell and his wife, Rebecca Falwell, had befriended who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple. Falwell has said that his wife, who also goes by Becki, had a brief affair with the man.

Falwell, 58, filed a defamation suit against Liberty in October, alleging the school accepted without verifying what he called false statements made by the young man. He later dropped the lawsuit.

In its lawsuit, Liberty contends that Falwell failed to return university-owned computers, devices and confidential information to Liberty and that he failed to disclose to the university alleged threats of extortion he had received in connection with potential personal scandals.

………

The 38-page complaint alleges that Falwell deliberately sought to hide the affair. “Despite his clear duties as an executive and officer at Liberty, Falwell Jr. chose personal protection,” the suit alleged.

Further, the suit alleged: “Falwell Jr.’s actions in breaching the fiduciary duty he owed to Liberty were willful and wanton and disregarded the rights of Liberty.”

………

When Falwell resigned in August, he said he was entitled to $10.5 million in severance. Liberty, in its lawsuit, disputes that claim.

His severance package is a major issue in the suit. Liberty alleges that Falwell concealed information about extortion threats from the governing board when he negotiated a new contract in 2019 that included a higher salary and a provision for two years of severance pay, under certain conditions, worth a total of $2.5 million. The suit indicates that Liberty agreed to that level of payout on Aug. 28, 2020.

It appears that everyone involves worships Benjamin Franklin. Isn’t there something in the bible about worshiping false gods?

………

Falwell’s father, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., was a prominent leader of the religious right who founded Liberty University and a nearby church.

Under Jerry Falwell Jr., who became Liberty’s president and chancellor after his father died in 2007, the school grew enormously and became a frequent stop for Republican politicians and others who wanted to connect with conservative evangelical Christian audiences.

………

Liberty recently announced that Jonathan Falwell, senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Falwell Jr.’s brother, will become the school’s campus pastor at the end of the semester.

That last bit has gotta hurt.

I hope that this case burns through decades and consumes millions of dollars from both institutions.